


I don't believe in fairies but would I cut down a blackthorn? No.

by aesthete_laureate



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Also there's a fairy in the dream sequence, Are we ever going to talk about the fact that per the book she was canonically Bella Goth-ed?, Brief mention of Experiment #210 aka the Shapeshifter, Caught in the Rain, Fairy Ring, Ford is dismissive of others' concerns but who is surprised!, Frottage, Huddling for warmth excuse, I wrote these tags before I wrote the fic, I'm pretty sure, Impromptu Camping, M/M, Magical Realism, My personal head canon that grandma McGucket was a witch also makes a cameo sorry, One (1) mention of the memory gun, Outdoor Sex, Science shenanigans, They actually talk about their feelings!, Tobacco mention and also use, well kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:29:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29794026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesthete_laureate/pseuds/aesthete_laureate
Summary: The rain hits unexpectedly while a certain pair of researchers are on their way to camp out in the bunker, but luckily there’s a dry space just a little ways off the trail where they can wait it out.
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Ford Pines
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	I don't believe in fairies but would I cut down a blackthorn? No.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by that scene in Derry Girls (Netflix, 2019) where the mom (best character) panics because she thinks she lost her purse on their way out of town due to the troubles™

-

It’s getting a lot darker a lot quicker now that the summer is over. 

They had left the cabin at half past three, and someone had decided that he wanted to take the scenic route to the newly finished bunker - 

“It’ll take a few minutes, tops, I just want to see if that book in the library had an actual substantial claim about the wild-grown candy rocks. Apparently they look exactly like pebbles, but if you crack the shell they’ve got chocolate inside, and not the dark stuff, either, the book said it tasted like Nestle-” 

\- and one dead end had brought up another lead, and now they’re tightly following a faint and winding footpath in the dim light of the ailing afternoon.

At least they’re finally back on their way to the original destination, though. And with a pocket each of locally-harvested, candy coated (it really does taste exactly like processed, store-bought,) chocolate rocks, no less. 

Ford is focused on the ground in front of them, he’s a couple feet ahead of his companion and is taking his role as trailblazer very seriously. There had been a few calls that he’d had to make, where he couldn’t quite tell if the path forked into two or if there was just a naturally-occuring clearing of sorts off to one side, and he’s proud that, so far, they haven’t managed to get too lost. 

In fact, there’s a gap in the trees just up ahead that he recognizes, and a little ways down from there is the metal tree chassis Fiddleford had thrown together to camouflage the mess of radio antennae and hidden trapdoor - under which, of course, is their Totally Innocuous, Not Expecting The End Of The World At All fallout shelter. 

Fiddleford, on the other hand, is running through their work plan for the next couple of days in his head, ironing out the hows and wheres and the should-I-use-copper-or-steels, when a sharp intake of breath from him causes Ford to glance back over his shoulder, concerned.

“Wait,” Fiddleford stops dead in his tracks, and starts to rifle through the satchel slung over his shoulder.

“We’ve got to keep moving, we’re losing the light pretty fast. I want to make it to the bunker by six at the latest.”

“I need to make sure I have the magnet gun cartridge, slow your roll. I can’t see it. Oh, lord,” He crosses himself quickly, a vague gesture in front of his chest more than anything, and then closes his eyes and inclines his head, “Hallowed Saint Anthony, divine will has made you the patron saint of all things lost and stolen--”

Ford cuts in, they don’t have time for this. “-I’m ninety eight point six percent positive it’s in there, now come on-,” but he’s ignored.

“--turn to you today with the love and adoration of a lamb on the altar- No, no, you’re gonna have to give me the flashlight and I’m gonna have to turn around.”

“I’m not going to let you do that,” Ford deadpans, shifting where he stands only about a yard further along the footpath. “It’s not safe in the daylight, and it’s just plain dangerous at night.”

That earns him a scathing glare from over the top of Fiddleford’s glasses, who responds with a tight “I’m not the city slicker between us. Let me just-”

“-we’re not making another trip tonight!”

“Okay, fine. Fine! But-but without the cartridge I can’t operate the magnet neutralizer, and without that we’ll get stuck in the lower level and- and if we stay there overnight, we’ll be crushed by the security room, so you know what? I hope you’re ready for that weight on your shoulders, I really--” He’s frantic, digging through his effects, a stray sock dropping down to the damp ground. Suddenly, though, he cuts himself off, straightening up as his eyes narrow in contemplative thought, “oh, actually, wouldn’t you know it, I think I put it in your bag.”

There’s a quick, confirmatory pat of the pocket on the side of Ford’s bag, who then rolls his eyes. “Okay, well. I’m glad we sorted that out before you had some kind of an attack. I worry about your blood pressure, sometimes.”

-

There’s a terse silence that follows as they continue along the trail. Evening fog rolls in down the side of the mountain, and once the sun dips below the horizon it’s a scant few minutes before the pair is ensconced in deep, quiet northern darkness. 

And then the rain starts. 

Just a light sprinkling at first, the kind of tiny drops that you see more than feel. Too quickly, though, that turns into clothes-penetrating, gets-in-your-eyes proper rain, and then the skies tear open and the raindrops turn into driving sheets that the sudden wind blows nearly horizontal, stinging their eyes - and soaking Ford’s shirt when he doesn’t manage to button his coat up quickly enough. 

“Shit!”

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m fucking soaked!”

“Don’t say that, either!”

Ford groans, frustrated, and ducks under a nearby branch. Before Fiddleford can inquire about the plan, he’s caught by the sleeve and tugged into a, thankfully, fairly dry hollow that’s surrounded by a ring of tightly-interwoven trees.

(Suspicion nags at him immediately, the trees are arranged in a nearly perfect circle, and his grandmother had always said not to step into circles in the forest, or at least not to do it if he wanted to come home on time. There was that story, what did she call it, where the woman stepped into a fairy ring and when she crossed out the other side of it in three steps, three years had passed.)

Ford makes another low sound of frustration, shrugging out of his knee-length overcoat before setting about wrestling the wet button-down shirt off of himself. Fiddleford can’t help a small, fond smile, slipping out of his own shorter wool coat before placing it over his companion’s now bare shoulders. It wouldn’t fit if Ford tried to put it on properly, too narrow in the yoke, too short in the sleeves, but it’s the kindness in the gesture that really matters.

“S’pose we oughta stop for the night, then,” his voice is gentle, warm, there’s a note of something to it that makes Ford just instinctually calm down.

It takes a moment to realize why, but it’s blatantly obvious once he thinks of it. The note is caring. And Ford doesn’t need to be protected, he doesn’t even particularly like his chances with Fiddleford being the one to protect him (especially from any of a number of large forest-dwelling entities) but it reminds him of being younger, of being looked-out-for, and it feels good.

So he sighs heavily, nods his agreement, and then plops right down in the center of the oddly-dry hollow.

“I really wanted to get down there for the night, you know? The shapeshifter is getting more and more restless, I need to keep closer tabs on it.” Ford glances up from where he’d leaned his head into his hand when leaves rustle as Fiddleford sits down beside him, “and I don’t want to send you to check on it alone, because of what happened to you the last time.”

Fiddleford looks blankly perplexed for a second, then shakes his head minutely with another small smile. “Don’t worry about me, I’m alright. We breed them tough back home.”

That makes Ford crack a smile of his own, and he tugs on the front of the borrowed coat to try and close it around himself. It doesn’t reach. But it’s strangely still in the hollow, the wind seemingly unable to penetrate the ring of trees that surround them. And just from the presence of two warm bodies, the air around them is already a cool-not-cold temperature that’s on its way toward becoming bearable.

As the rain pelts the ground not three feet away, Fiddleford spreads Ford’s coat on the ground, covering dry leaves that whisper against each other as he does so. 

It’ll have to do for a bed tonight, although it would be a challenge for even just one of them to lay on it comfortably - maybe they’ll sleep in shifts. Noticing the attempt at setting up camp, Ford shifts up onto his knees and takes the coat from over his shoulders, folding it over itself a couple of times before setting it down so that, from a purely visual standpoint, the whole setup looks like a blanket and pillow. 

“I’m starting to really wish I brought a change of clothes in my bag, instead of relying on what I already have down in the bunker,” Ford sighs, shuffling onto the makeshift bed. He reaches over for the aforementioned rucksack, then, and pulls it into his lap so he can start to paw through in search of his journal. They seem to have found some sort of weather-altering pocket here between these trees, and he’s sure as hell going to document it.

Fiddleford moves to sit on the other, unoccupied half, and similarly goes through his own bag, fishing a small can out of the bottom of it that prompts a scoff from Ford when he catches sight of it.

“That stuff doesn’t help your blood pressure, you know.”

Fiddleford doesn’t respond, just taps the lid sharply and then pops a wad of tobacco into his mouth. He tucks the offending can back under his own lab notebook and sets his bag aside again.

Ford rolls his eyes so hard that it’s almost audible, then curls himself down over his journal and proceeds to become dead to the world in favor of engrossing himself in his writing. 

The silence is fairly companionable this time around, the sound of rain still hammering outside the circle of trees and the two of them ending up sitting back to back, each writing in their respective notebooks. Ford completes his sketch of the interwoven trees - no, the branches actually connect to each other in a sort of braided pattern, would you look at that - at the same time that Fiddleford finishes up a letter.

“I suppose now is when we flip a coin to decide who gets to sleep on the coat, isn’t it?” Ford grins at Fiddleford over his shoulder, then turns to face him. “You brought a coin, right,” he asks, suddenly becoming serious.

“I’m sure I’ve got one somewhere,” he’s answered after a couple seconds’ delay, but no move is made by either of them toward locating it.

There’s a pause, a heavy silence during which they both pointedly avoid the other’s gaze.

Then, “it’s pretty brisk out here, you know?”

Fiddleford nods, moving down so that they’re sat side by side. His hip presses against Ford’s. “Yeah. It wouldn’t hurt nothin’ to stick close together.”

A tiny smile. It’s mirrored back. Ford’s shoulder nudges against his companion’s gently.

“Good night.”

“Night.”

-

They don’t get to sleep for a while, really.

It’s quick, sweaty, the two of them rutting against one another as the rain falls heavily outside, hushed murmurs of affection cut off by hasty kisses.

“I-”

“I know, I know, shh-”

“I do, I really- really do-”

“Shh,” Fiddleford pleads, tucking his head down into Ford’s neck, “sh, don’t say it,” even as his hips stutter and he clutches at Ford’s shoulders like a lifeline.

-

The rain slows to a soft pitter-patter as they lay together quietly, Fiddleford’s head leant onto Ford’s shoulder and their hands loosely linked over the latter’s chest. Outside the circle of trees, late-season fireflies float about in their ethereal dance, and Ford’s eyes are softly shut as he listens to the distant conversation of some nocturnal bird to another (it sounds like spotted owls, a juvenile and an adult, if he had to guess).

Rustle, shift, and then: “honestly, it does me sick to worry about you.” Fiddleford’s voice is hushed, like he’s telling a secret, and his light brown eyes hold something reverent in them when he leans up to look at Ford for a moment, which he politely pretends not to like as much as he does. “You overestimate yourself, and it’s tough to even say that ‘cause you’re so bright and you’d never think someone like you would have to sleep, or eat, or, say like, learn how to close the kettle lid properly. You put yourself into danger Stanford, you throw yourself at it and so someone’s gotta keep the moth from the flame, you know?”

“This moth knows what it’s doing,” Ford murmurs back, leaning in close to press a quick kiss to the tip of his companion’s nose. He’s answered with a huff, and a pretty pink blush that’s all but invisible in the darkness, and Fiddleford leans down to tuck his head back into Ford’s shoulder. 

He falls asleep quickly in Ford’s embrace, listening to the steady thrum of his heart.

-

_The leaves whisper to each other as he moves, eyes slowly opening to the hazy blue light of just-before-morning._

_He pushes himself to sit up in the empty hollow with a gasp that hardly displaces the still, thick air that surrounds him. Lights rise up around him, stirred up from the ground by the disturbance, and they would look like fireflies except for the lack of wings - these are purely light, tiny spheres swirling around his body like snowflakes caught in an updraft._

_He doesn’t actually have to breathe, he finds out, and it’s really much easier not to. The stillness is more comfortable, and he feels almost as if he’s underwater - there’s a pressure to the air that’s both calming and terrifying, and he’s completely, utterly alone._

_Alone, that is, until a breeze floats through the stillness of the hollow. The breeze stirs the lights around him, and it carries a voice. A voice that sounds exactly like his mother._

_“A fhuil mo chridhe,” she sighs, and the words sound like the rushing of wind through the pine boughs. They don’t mean anything, just sounds from some forgotten tongue of old, but he understands what she’s saying. She calls him, and she doesn’t call him honey, or darling, she calls him ‘blood of my heart’ and he feels her sorrow in his bones._

_“Time will not be kind to you,” and the voice sounds like his wife, now, and she sounds so pleading, so incredibly sad. What do you mean, he wants to ask, wants to smile reassuringly, I’m doing just fine._

_Something rustles at the edge of the ring of trees, and even though he turns at the noise he can’t see what it is that caused it. His vision is cloudy, as if the mountain fog had all condensed into this one little clearing, but he knows he’s no longer alone._

_“They say that the fair folk are fallen angels,” the woman is beautiful, but it stings his eyes to look at her. Swirled markings move across her skin like sketches in a flipbook, and when she moves she leaves an afterimage similar to the one left by looking at a bright light. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, what they’ll call angels once their name is forgotten too.”_

_He couldn’t speak if he tried. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, made of sand, and he’s still not sure if his eyesight is working at all._

_“You’ll be a prophet, in the words of the angels,” the woman says. One moment she looks like his mother, twenty years ago, dark hair and dirty apron, and the next she’s simply a pillar of light. “But in the words of men, a prophet is nothing but a madman.”_

_And she reaches out for him, and the heat radiating from her skin is palpable, warping the air. He doesn’t answer, he can’t speak. He can’t move, but his eyes dart away for a fraction of a second. He looks to the ground by his side._

_“Everyone’s choices come back around to them.” The woman says, suddenly grave, and for the briefest of moments he can see Ford, face boyish and soft in sleep, but colorless, lifeless. He frowns, reaches out to try and touch him, but even though he’s right there, he’s unable to reach._

_“You love him,” she sighs, and as she turns to leave she calls back over her shoulder, “You love hard, and you love kindly. But remember what happened to Cassandra.”_

_The circulating breeze disappears from the hollow as if sucked into a vacuum, and suddenly the oppressive stillness is back._

He wakes with a start, heart pounding, and curls tighter into Ford’s side. 

\- 

**Author's Note:**

> Do I even like Ford? I always write him super dismissive and condescending but I feel like thats just him! I feel like that’s in character! Jury is still out on whether I can actually stand him or not though.
> 
> Also today I found out that pigs dont exist on the isle of skye in scotland anymore because one ate a baby once and the population was collectively like. Naw. 
> 
> The very concept of a hog farm… terrifying.


End file.
